Year of the Doodle, End of May & ALL of JUNE

Hey, it's been a month & a bit since I've showed you the pages I've finished in Year of the Doodle, so let's hit it!May 28th - 31st:

Some notes on the days above:28: Man do I love me some gel pens. The yellow was phenomenal for this page.29: My usual pen (Pilot Acroball) for drawing, with some gouache for color. I really liked working with the gouache, so I'll be using it again.30: This prompt was a toughie, mainly because I did NOT feel like doodling curlique slides and the complicated playground equipment of TODAY. If you've read my other posts from this book, you might remember my saying (ad nauseum) that if something is too complicated, it's too much like work-work, and this is supposed to be enjoyable, and not work. I had googled playground equipment, and just like that remembered that dolphin spring-loaded death trap. Then I remembered other notable but not exactly "fun" happenings that occurred on various playground equipment of my checkered past. I think that's the thing that hooks me most and gets me into the place where I'm loving the drawing: It's the personal stories and the memories. Why be generic and sunshine-y when you can be specific and REAL? My opinion, anyway...31: There are so many faith emojis that I went in that direction, including using purple (the color of the faith emojis) as my color. Naturally I had to letter too, and I guess I'm just not happy unless I've researched and captured all of the THINGS there are to be researched and captured. It's the educational illustrator in me. That won't ever go away, and that's OK.

Some notes on the days above:1: I can't think of peaches without thinking of my favorite peach pie recipe.2: The prompt left the doodling up-for-grabs, so I opted to show a few of the objects that had played a role in the day's activities. Four of them had to do with a messed-up furnace, and the pinecone came into play at school when the kids were lobbing them at each other when they were supposed to be drawing with sidewalk chalk. I agree: getting hurt and sticky with sap is a MUCH better alternative...

Some notes on the days above:3: Being a brat for this prompt. A literal brat. The prompt was "Doodle what's here", so I mimicked everything that was there.4. Played around with my initials in graffiti writing. Not thrilled with it, but so what.5. This was a giant mess that I tried to rectify through all the means available to me. I did not use witchcraft, but I did bust out the gesso. You KNOW things are going badly when you bust out the gesso.6. The birds went a lot better. Stick with what you know. In my case, this is birds wearing sneakers and glasses.

Some notes on the days above:7: I am nothing if not literal. Ergo, I am nothing.8: Anyone who is on Safari and who has not updated to the latest Big Cat (or whatever Life Form Apple is currently on), will know about what a pain it is to see this endlessly-revolving Beach Ball of Death. I'd first heard about this phenomenon from my first Photoshop teacher. I thought he was makin' with the funny, but no. Not kidding. One of Life's annoyances. (As I was typing this the first time, I got the Spinning Beach Ball, had to force quit, and then found that what I'd typed was kaputnik. Irony!)9. The prompt on this was the top of the head curve and what became Kilroy's eyebrows. Kilroy was a popular graffiti from WWII and the Korean War. How do I know about this? My father served during the Korean War and he has, on more than one occasion when I was a kid, drawn Kilroy when I asked him to draw something for me. I was surprised to learn how many other names Kilroy has had, so it only seemed right to write them all down. (There's that educational illustrator in me coming out again.)10. Kitchen utensils. I work with them every day as I'm the indentured servant around here and one of the aspects of my indentured servitude is to cook. It dawned on me how VIOLENT some of the verbs are that are associated with kitchen utensils, so I "went there" in a half-hearted way. I could make this funnier and ruder with only slightly more effort. Trust me. It's one of my superpowers.11. I would like to spend a LOT more time trying to work in the style of Basquiat. The guy was a freakin' genius; on par with Picasso IMHO. Too soon dead.

Some notes on the days above:12: If you've read any of the notes on these pages, you will have learned that the lyric wire in my brain is often tripped by a prompt. I don't suppose that that's any different from the rest of you (i.e. I am not unique). I am fascinated how quickly these songs come up, often in their entirety. How marvelous our brains are, that they store so much content. So this prompt, "Fast car" burped up the Tracey Chapman tune. Great song; great lyrics. I owned this cassette "back in the day", so it's for certain that I memorized all the words to all the songs. Because words are important to me.13. Again with the lyrics! Oy! Love rollercoaster is a song that will still be in my head while I'm at the point I'm in a nursing home incapable of feeding myself. Unfortunately. There is an urban legend attached to this song, and that is: The scream that's heard in the song is supposedly the death throes of a woman. I don't believe that, but it does take the song from being a real ugger to only slightly more interesting.14. At bedtime. Got literal and shared the details of my own bedtime. They are not exotic by any means, but at least I had enough to doodle about to fill the space. And that's what matters.15. I liked the way I made the castles and buckets fit together. I'll probably use that again somewheres cuz it's a good idea. If I do say so myself. And I do.16. The prompt was WAVE, but I've been involved with one not found on the water, so I wrote/ doodled/ purloined a student's doodle for this day.

Some notes on the pages above: 17: So I like words, right? So I thought I'd write and doodle the words that began with "beach". So what if a Doodle Whale had to give its life in order to get my doodling needs met? I'm heartless.18. I only have really one "story" to go with "wedding cake" that's even remotely of interest, so I told about it.19. For this one, I got literal again. I'm either literal or I'm lyrical. Or both. I thought about the water's surface. (Also thought about the cool painting where you see the fish below the water's surface, the leaf or whatever ON the water's surface, and the tree above reflected IN the water. In a single pane of reality, you see three worlds: above, on, and below. That's really cool. But I didn't do that because 1. I'm not that good of an artist and 2. I'm lazy. So I did what I did instead.20. Cacti are really popular right now. So are sloths. Go figure. I'll never understand some of these trends. I had fun drawing these, but the thing that made it really fun was coming up with pet cactus names. I like to amuse myself because it puts me in a good mood if I wasn't there already.21. This was surprisingly fun too. When I think "flowers" and "circles" I typically also think "Zzzz". But I suppose that's where requiring more of yourself kicks in. I used an actual template to make all of the circles, but I like that it doesn't look like I did.

Some notes on the days above: 22: This prompt made me think immediately of Gudetama, a character I've been seeing a lot in cute online shops and in journaling videos. He was fun to draw.23: I like how this one developed. I drew the sharks coming out of the water (waves were already on page), and added water droplets. Water droplets... BLOOD droplets! Then the idea to make its shadow in blood occurred to me. I followed the scalloped pattern of the waves with the red to continue the illusion of waves. I'd written JAWS and the quote underneath, but that seemed sorta "ready-to-happen", so I added another line underneath that made me laugh.24. I have to admit to not being a fan of dream catchers. Sorry if this is deeply upsetting for you, but if we're going to have any type of relationship, I need to be myself around you. I can't quite pinpoint why I don't like them. Maybe it's the concept behind them that annoys, or maybe it's the feathers (not a fan) or the macrame-ish weaving. (I grew up in the '70s. One doesn't recover from macrame that easily, trust me.) Anywho, I didn't want to get into DREAMS, nighttime ones OR goal-setting ones, so I skirted the whole issue altogether by being the wise guy that I am.

Some notes on the days above: 25. The prompt on the page suggested muskox horns to me, so I went with that. Then combined my educational illustration background with a dash of naughtiness, and the result is what you see here.26. Baby Talk was the prompt. It's also the first magazine that hired me to do an illustration for them. Ain't nuthin' like going from "unpublished" to "published" and seeing your name alongside your work in a national publication. I'll never forget that thrill.27. I save scraps from junk mail (as you may know), so I'd harvested a bunch of dandelion junk. The dandelion head suggested a lion's face in it, simple, and then his body was colored green to match the plant. Again: simple.28. Since the 29th's prompt was going to be about DOGS, and I was going to be posting on Facebook a series of images called, "The Dog Days of Summer", I thought I'd do all of these prompts in a dog vein, kinda how I did the whole page of rabbits back in April. I used Q stickers for this page, and it was fun being imaginative with them.29. These three guys are based on my three finger puppet dogs, who are named Boondoggle, Doggerel, and Dogmatic.30. More dogs, this time bending to the "Doodle with squares" prompt. I decided to showcase the dogs that live in the neighborhood that I see most days.

So that's it! We are caught up!Hope you enjoyed that GLUT of images and words.Thanks for stopping by!